The Force (Fighting Freedom Book 1)

by Paige Clendenin

  “If you are standing, exit out of the door to the back of the room, there you will meet with Mitch and Hannah to learn where you will be living for a while.”

  All the young children begin to filter out of the room. Shae is looking over her shoulder at us while she is being moved by the flow of children, and then they are gone.

  “If you are thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen, stand. You are to leave out the door on the right to meet Joe and Lisa, do so promptly.”

  After that flow of kids are gone, the cave-like space seems bigger with more room to move around, but everyone is still sitting in groups on the floor.

  “If you are sixteen or seventeen, stand. You will be going out the door behind me; your phase instructors are Pete and Jo Ann.”

  That group seems smaller than the other two, but the girl from our little band of fighters with the bruised knuckles, and the boy with the sprawled legs get up and start walking too. They are being followed by an armed guard.

  I didn’t even notice which group the other two F3s were in, but they are gone.

  “Lastly, if you are eighteen or nineteen, you are to go out the door to the left and meet with Samantha and my son. If you are twenty or older, stay in this room, and we will be giving you instruction.”

  I stand up, along with Eli, Mar, and the boy with the bruised face. I notice now who I know he is, he is Brad, the boy from my lecture group. His arm band says Shawn Reed now, but I know who he is.

  I wonder how he came up with that name.

  The rush of us filter out of the room, but the four of us are being followed by a guard with a gun. Mar is not a threat, but she dares not leave us now. The gun does not seem to bother her, though.

  I look behind me, as we are the last to go through the door, and sitting in the room are about five people; those must be the ones who are over twenty.

  I wonder what is going to happen to them.

  The door closes behind us, and we are walked down a hall and into yet another room. This room is dark with small patches of light coming through what looks like skylights on the ceiling. Toward the far side of the room are three clusters of chairs separate by rope. On the first chair in each cluster is a number. The first cluster has a number one, the second, has a two, and the third, a three.

  “Sit in the group of seats that correspond with your armband,” a man’s voice calls out from behind us.

  I turn, and there, standing in front of the door that we just came in, are Samantha and Jake.

  I travel over to the chairs that have the number three on them. I realize that Mar is going to have to leave us now, so I give her a shy smile and place my hand on her arm. Eli puts his arm over her shoulders, and I wonder if this is their first embrace.

  “It’s ok,” Mar says, and she walks away.

  I remember that her band has a one on it, and I wonder how long it will be before she can catch up to us.

  I sit down in the front row of the group marked three, the guards and their guns still trained on us.

  “Guards fall back….” Jake says.

  “Yeah. I don’t think they are going to give us any trouble.” Samantha says through a grin, as she’s cracking her knuckles one at a time. The guards walk away from us and go stand one on each side of the exit door, leaving Samantha and Jake standing in the middle of the room.

  “Look around, you are divided into three groups. Those of you who are in a lower level group, you now have someone to look up to,” Samantha says with a smirk.

  There are thirteen in group one, including Mar, seven in group two, and only Me, Eli, and Shawn in group three. Everyone stares at us.

  “There are twenty-three of you,” Jake says. “As you move up through the phases, we will change the number on your bands. In a month, it is possible that some of you may still be a level two or three while others are a seven or eight. It is up to you how fast you learn.”

  All that I can think is, I want to show them that I am worth something. If it is up to me…

  I am going to prove myself.

  “We will be pulling you one at a time into another room to get an idea of who you are,” Jake says.

  “You will be in this room for a while, so get comfortable,” Samantha says. “Don’t get any ideas to do something stupid, because our friends over there,” she points to the guards with her thumb, “will make sure you don’t.”

  “We will both take someone, so it won’t take as long as you might think,” Jake says.

  “Chris Powers,” Samantha calls.

  A short, heavyset boy gets out of group one and follows her through a door on the other end of the room.

  “Mar Strong.” Jake announces.

  Mar stands up and wipes her hands on her pants, then marches after Jake through the door, looking behind her at the last second.

  After about ten or fifteen minutes, Samantha and Jake return one at a time and request a new person. When they return for a new one, the others don’t come back. “I wonder where they are taking them when they are done,” I whisper to Eli.

  “Probably to eat ice cream.” Shawn says as he leans up from the second row, clearly hearing us.

  We all laugh, but it feels weird. Shawn, when he was Brad, would never talk to me, but now he does.

  “I’m Shawn… well umm…Brad… Do you remember me from lecture?”

  “Yeah, we have only been in the same lecture group since we were ten,” I say flatly.

  “Yeah,” he says, looking down. “I didn’t talk too much to anyone, I was taught not to, but here now, I thought it couldn’t hurt.”

  We don’t say anything for a while. All of group one and half of group two are done, and we have been here for what seems like eternity.

  “What do you think they will ask?” I ask Eli.

  “Not sure, probably how we know how to fight, where we come from, that sort of thing.”

  “Do you think we will have to talk about our home life?” Shawn asks quietly.

  “I don’t know, I guess we will see,” I say.

  “Eli Strong.” Jake says.

  Eli follows, leaving me and Shawn behind. We don’t talk, just sit looking at the doors across the room waiting for them to open. After ten minutes, Samantha comes out of the door on the left and calls for Shawn Reed to follow her.

  “Good luck.” I say as he walks past me. He just looks back at me and half smiles.

  I wonder why he doesn’t want to talk about his home life and why he was told not to talk during lecture. Eight years of not talking to anyone other than an instructor when told to. That would be a hard life.

  “Liz Strong,” Jake calls from the doorway.

  I get up and walk towards him.

  Chapter Eight

  “What’s your name?” Jake asks sounding intimidating.

  “Eliza… no Liz, it’s Liz, Liz… Liz Strong.”

  “How old are you, Liz?”

  “Eighteen.”

  Jake writes my response on a clipboard as I answer. He sits in a chair with one foot in the seat and the clipboard propped on his knee. I am standing in the middle of the room as if he is looking me over to see what I am made of. I fear that all he will find is a little girl who is scared and small.

  “Strong, Strong, we have a couple other Strongs with us this year. Are you in a family group?” he asks as he flips through the pages of the clipboard.

  “Yeah, there are six of us here, but only three of us are in this group, the others are in the little kid group.”

  “Mar,” he says, “you aren’t related to her for real, are you? She’s Spanish and you’re not.”

  “No, she is my best friend, she and her brother are here, so we made a group.”

  “And Eli, you’re not related to him either, are you?”

  “What makes you think that?” I ask Jake almost rough.

  “You and he look nothing alike, I just thought maybe he was just a friend too, or maybe a boyfriend.”

  “No, he’s my brother, my twin brother that is
.” I say

  “Oh,” he says with a look. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  He stands up and walks closer to me. I don’t know what is going to happen, so I back up and throw my hands up in a fighting position like I did before.

  “Relax,” he tells me as he puts a hand on top of my fist and pulls my arms down.

  I tighten my fist around the feather as I let my fists fall, but I keep them both balled up at my side. I can feel the feather bite into my fist. The pain is a quick reminder of my mother and little sister.

  I need to put it back around my neck as soon as no one is looking.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, but my, aren’t you the feisty one.” He smiles.

  “We just have to look over our members to see what kind of physical condition we think they are in.”

  “And?” I say. “What kind of condition do you think I’m in?”

  “Well, you don’t look bad physically, you have some muscle, but not much. You’re a little short.”

  “I am a girl,” I say through my teeth.

  “I can see that,” he says as he circles around me. “Where did you learn to fight?”

  “My brother, Eli,” I say.

  “I thought so,” he says, “my informants tell me that you and he put up quite the fight the other day.”

  I don’t say anything, I just stand there looking at him. I don’t know what to say.

  “Well, I think you earned your ranking, and we will see what happens with you, but remember that we will have our eye on you,” he reminds through a smile.

  I shiver a little inside.

  He asks me questions about who is left at home, and I tell him about my mom and little sister, about my dad dying, and where we live. He asks me about who the rest of my family group is here, and I tell him about Shae, Zac, and Syl.

  Some of the questions seem personal, while others just sound precautionary.

  It seems I am in that room forever before I am allowed to leave, but when I am, a guard walks in and takes me by the arm to lead me to where I am supposed to go. At the last minute, just before I reach the door, Jake grabs my wrist and pulls me back in the room.

  He leans in close to me, his mouth almost to my ear. “Listen to me,” he says, “be careful in there, because you are a level 3, other members in your group might try to pick a fight with you to prove they deserve a higher phase. Do not let them do that to you. Fight back, promise me.”

  I nod my head, and he releases my wrist. I walk out the door, looking over my shoulder at him. He is standing in the middle of the room, arms to either side of him, just staring at me. I want to keep talking to him, asking questions about the complex, but I can’t.

  I am brought to a large room filled with cots with storage trunks at the end of each one and a table with a lamp with odds and ends beside them. I notice that there are names on each cot and trunk, and I walk searching for mine. There are boys, and girls all around me doing the same.

  “Over here,” I hear a voice call from across the room, then I see that it is coming from my brother.

  When I get to him, I see that at the end of the row is Shawn’s cot, then Eli’s, mine, and then Mar’s. I am relieved that I will be by the ones that I know.

  On the right side of the room are fifteen cots, and on the left side is a row of the same, with an isle in between. Seven cots are empty in sporadic places throughout the room. There is one on the other side of Mar and one across from mine.

  In a moment of distraction, I take that time to take the necklace out of my hand where it had bit into my palm, and stick it around my neck in hopes that it blends in.

  “I guess they expected a higher number of us,” my brother says when he realizes what I am looking at.

  “Yeah,” is all that I say, as I continue looking around.

  A couple hours later we are lead to a bathroom on the other end of the hall. There, the boys go to one side, and the girls go to the other to shower and get cleaned up. The only thing that separates girls from the boys is a curtain that hangs down the middle of the room.

  After we are all cleaned up, we are lead into a dining hall filled with young people. Mar, Eli, Shawn, and I get our food and sit at an empty table at the edge of the room. After a few minutes, I see Shae, Syl, and Zac coming our way with trays of their own. Zac puts his tray by Mar, and they hug for the longest time. Syl sits by me, and Shae sits on the other side of Eli.

  “This is Shawn,” Eli says to Shae. “He’s from the R9 too.”

  “Hi,” Shae says quietly.

  “Hey,” Shawn replies to her with a smile as he extends his hand out for her to shake.

  Shae takes his hand and pumps it up and down, it looks unnatural for her to be doing, almost grown up. I’m not even sure where she learned how to shake hands in the first place.

  Maybe this was her first?

  They tell us about what they had done since they left us. It was not so different from what we had been through. They had to report all the same things we did and are sleeping in a room identical to ours.

  “I get to sleep next to Syl,” Shae says with a smile on her face.

  “That’s great,” I hear Eli respond to her.

  “There is this one kid in the dorm that told me I was ugly,” Syl says out of the middle of nowhere. “Then, he tried to hit me, but I dodged his punch, and he hit the wall instead.”

  She said the last part with a smile, but she’s upset, you can tell because she is just sitting there looking into her tray of food.

  “Don’t let it bother you,” Mar says as she sits her hand on her back.

  “Yeah,” I say, “I was told that anyone with a high rank, might be picked on, you just have to be brave.”

  After the words come out of my mouth, I can feel Eli and Shawn gazing at me. Maybe they didn’t tell them that, and if that is the case, that doesn’t make any sense, because why would Jake tell just me and not them? After all we are all three in the same situation…

  After super, we say goodnight to the younger of our family members and go back to our dorm.

  I find myself sitting on my cot, rifling through the things that are in my trunk. In the trunk are two changes of clothes, both green, both the exact same. Along with the clothes are a pair of black boots with laces up them, and four pair of thick, black socks. There are also a hair brush, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, and deodorant. Also, in the trunk, is some bedding and a pillow.

  I make my bed and lay down on my side, looking into the lamp light.

  Along with the lamp, on the side table there is a bottle of water, a watch with a black band and a plain glass face, and a small first aid kit.

  Just as I am about to drift off to sleep, a voice calls out from the doorway behind me.

  “A few ground rules for tonight, and we will go over the rest tomorrow. If you get thirsty, there is water on your table. You are permitted one visit to the bathroom during the night; a guard will lead you there and back. In the bathroom, you can do what you need to, but you only have ten minutes to do so. If you run out of water, while you are there would be the time to fill it at the fountain outside the bathroom door.”

  Jake leaves the doorway and starts walking down the middle of the isle in our direction.

  “If,” he continues, “you need me for any reason, my apartment is down the hall and to the left… you better be dying to come to me in the middle of the night, got that.”

  He stops talking and continues walking the isle to the end where I am laying. He looks at Shawn, then Eli, then at me. He holds his gaze at me for a moment then walks back the other direction.

  “Lastly, we are a prompt people, you have your watches on your table, wear them. You are to meet us at seven a.m. sharp…”

  As he reaches the door he turns back our direction with one hand resting on the door frame and his head resting on his arm, he looks tired.

  “Lights out at ten.” Then, he turns around and walks out, disappearing into the darkness of the hall.r />
  Chapter Nine

  An alarm rings at exactly 6:30a.m. Startled, I get to my feet, unsure where I am at first, then I remember that I… no we, are at The Force complex.

  A weight tugs at my heart, like strings attempting to pull it to my stomach. This ache is an ache for my mom and little sister.

  I shake my head, trying to shake the thought of them away. It doesn’t work.

  I notice that the majority of the others are up, getting dressed, and putting their boots on.

  I pull my change of clothes out of my trunk, and Mar and I take turns shielding each other from everyone in the room so we can get dressed.

  I pull my boots on over thick socks and lace them all the way up, double knotting them at the top.

  They are heavy on my feet when I walk.

  Then, I run a brush through my hair, leaving it hang in dark waves over my shoulders.

  “Will you braid my hair?” I hear Mar ask me as she holds up her brush and a hair tie.

  “Sure,” I say.

  I have gotten rather good at this, since Lydia has had me braid her hair every day since she was two.

  “What do you think is going to happen today?” Mar whispers.

  “Probably we will be listening to more rules,” I snicker as I talk.

  “Whatever it is, I’m glad that you guys are here to do it with me.” Mar says, as she looks at me, then to Shawn, and lastly to Eli, where she holds her gaze for a while.

  Eli walks up to her and runs a hand down her braid.

  “Me too,” he whispers, “me too.”

  After Mar and I are done, and Eli and Shawn finish getting ready, we all put our watches on and walk out of the room together.

  All twenty-three of us are lead down the halls of the complex. We filter into a room not that different than one of the lecture compound rooms. In the room are six tables with five chairs each at them. The four of us take a table near the front of the room. No one else sits with us.

  On the wall hangs a chart similar to the one that Jake showed us the day before. On it are the fifteen phases:

  Phase one: Survive induction.

  Phase two: Show promise.